


Salt Shift

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gardener!Cas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 13:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for the beautiful <a href="http://gardenercas.tumblr.com">Gardener!Cas</a> 'verse ♥</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt Shift

_A letter from the ocean_ , he thinks.

Dean’s letters always carry a scent; wet, and thick with salt, like he furls them into bottles and drops them in the sea, instead of leaving them in letter-boxes whenever he makes port. The idea, though foolish, makes him smile; green-glass capsules bobbing on the ocean, making their way home.

He’s always a little embarrassingly eager with them; likes to sit outside and read them if it’s not raining; perch on the porch-steps if it is, holding the paper out of the way of the wet.

 _Cas,_ he says, and his words are rounded, and sweet.

There’s a special brand of elation that comes with reading them; like they’re digestible, and they give him sustenance. He will read the letter, maybe just half of it - then go for a walk, process it, and plan his reply.

Words have to be so careful between them written down, and he crafts each response meticulously; considers  _Dear Dean,_ or just,  _Dean,_ the word soft enough. But when he comes back; when he’s  _there;_ conversation spills out of Castiel like rainwater over the edge of a bathtub, dropping fat from porcelain, clear; frantic. He’ll say anything, everything, and laugh.

Dean smells like the ocean when he returns; of wood-boards, of slick fish scales and brine. Castiel develops an obsession with the sea; with its roiling, rolling breaths, its heavy tide.

In the evenings after Dean returns, the air always smells like summer.

Castiel won’t let him take a shower before he drags him to bed; likes to breathe him in, the whole of him; aching scent of the waves, as if Dean himself could rear up and swallow him whole, and Castiel often finds himself breathless with how much he wants it.

It’s easy, then, slick with sweat, murmuring ridiculous things in his ear –  _I missed you, do you want to go for breakfast tomorrow, should we make it, instead? –_ to forget that all too soon he’ll be gone again. The tide sweeps in and pulls back, and Castiel himself is so rooted that it’s hard to imagine being so on the move, so transient, as Dean.

One morning before another departure, fingers trailing lazy over Dean’s collarbone, the bedclothes rucked, a mess, he sits up in bed, and just looks at him.

They both smell of salt. It rubs off on him; blends with the callouses on his fingers, and is suddenly everywhere it was not, before.

Dean always leaves so much of himself behind. In the house; in the garden. At first, finding things - a forgotten pair of underpants, a sock, a cufflink - Castiel would offer to mail them to him, but Dean always refused, and eventually Castiel realised that it was purposeful. Like cutting a swathe behind himself, Dean doesn’t want to be forgotten; leaves behind his heady salt-smell, a damp, crumpled sheaf of cotton on the floorboards in the bedroom. The soft indents of his teeth in an abandoned piece of toast.

He never gets to finish breakfast, anyway, before he leaves; he eats so slowly that Castiel gets impatient and pulls him against the counter, hands down the back of his underwear before Dean has space to laugh. By the time Cas lets him go he’s half late, and Castiel’s fingers slip around his lower back, mouth leaving marks that Dean’s co-workers will mock him for, later on.  

Once he’s gone the house always seems so  _huge_.

He has a tradition, however small. Dean usually leaves early in the morning; pushed out of bed before the dawn, eyes bleary and unfocused. So Castiel will go back to bed once he is gone, and lie against the sheets from the night before, with the window wide open above his head.

From there he can breathe it all in; the patter of rain, the ocean-spray, thick, slate grey, intoxicating. The mix of that and the scent of chrysanthemum; honeysuckle winding up the outside wall; lavender-cling.

The smell of the garden is always stronger after a rain, and he inhales it with purpose, with joy; slurs his head against the pillows of their shared bed and imagines Dean’s journey on the boat, spiralling out from the bay; imagines, too, his inevitable return home.


End file.
